What happened?
The market surveillance authority was already involved and a recall was ordered because a supposed product defect was revealed in an accident.
We have taken a closer look at the error. To do this, we went to the manufacturer / importer and looked at larger numbers of the same type and found that the frequency of this error is very low, but the alleged error appears again and again.
So here, we were able to confirm the authority’s assessment for the time being.
The authority had identified a violation of legal requirements as the cause of the error. However, since we were unable to reconcile the cause of the accident with this cause of the fault, we carried out our own fault cause analysis.
In the process, it came to our attention that the authority had assessed something incorrectly:
It compared the characteristics of the error with an outdated state of the law.
In fact, the products were compliant with the legislation. The alleged error was therefore not a mistake. When we re-examined the course of the accident as described, we recognized indications that the accident had occurred in a different way than described – which was then dealt with by an accident analyst.
What does it mean?
Evaluation error of the authority
Under the correct state of the law, no recall should have been ordered at all.
If we had not discovered this error, the company would have had to carry out an expensive and time-consuming recall, which was not “legal” at all. We were able to avert the recall!
How could we help?
In a sense, through detective work! Among other things, we analyzed 200 pages line by line to understand how the agency arrived at this assessment. We have continued to analyze several products and to a) confirm the error and b) to get a valid conclusion on the entire production with regard to the error frequency.
And we took over the communication with the authority and prepared an expert opinion that our client could give her.
In doing so, it’s important that the agency doesn’t feel like it has to defend itself, because that only makes things more difficult in the future.
And it’s important to understand that market surveillance authorities play an important role in protecting us as consumers from potential hazards. Just think of the “rotten meat scandals” or the recalls of children’s toys.
But it is important that a recall actually serves to eliminate a hazard. And this requires a factual and technically sound assessment.
Our tips
- Get legal expertise regarding failure and root cause analysis and recall management!
- Save yourself the costs of a possibly unnecessary callback!
- Communication with authorities has to be learned! Meet her at eye level and with understanding instead of lecturing her.
Do you need experts to support you?
Go to the corresponding LinkedIn post here.
